From the perspective of parents: interviews following a child protection investigation

This report is based on interviews with 156 parents who had been investigated by a statutory child protection agency following notifications that concerned 219 children. The aim was to understand how parents perceived the investigation, how they felt about what had happened, and how they had responded to it. This study took place as one component of an Australian Research Council funded Linkage Project titled Community Capacity Building in Child Protection through Responsive Regulation. The report provides an initial overview of parents’ perceptions across a range of areas including perceptions of what child protection workers did and how they went about it, what parents thought about the report that instigated the investigation, the response of parents’ social networks, feelings about being a parent, and expectations of the future.